A woman commented on this morning’s letter about going to church.
She has late stage COPD. She does not leave the house except for doctor appointments she cannot skip. A neighbor offered to drive her and she is afraid to go, because she is afraid of her own breathing.
Then she wrote this.
“So I’m going to read and pray for clarity.”
She is not looking for a way out. She is asking God how to get there.
Hold onto her. She comes back at the end of this and she wrecks the whole argument.
There is a kind of Christianity I cannot stand, and until this week I did not have a name for it.
Exception Christianity.
Not rebellion. Nobody in this category is shaking a fist. They believe the Book. Most would defend it in a parking lot. What they have is not doubt. It is a reason the command does not reach them.
The reason is always true. That is what makes it work.
He really does travel for work. She really did get hurt by that church. The schedule really is brutal this season. Nobody is lying.
An exception Christian does not argue with the verse. He agrees with it, warmly, and then explains his situation.
Read it slow.
“Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse.” (Luke 14:16-18)
Stop on four words.
With one consent.
Not one man. Not a bad apple. All of them, and they agreed. Nobody organized it. That is what a culture is.
Now the reasons.
“The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” (Luke 14:18-20)
Property. Work. Family.
Read them again and watch what happens to the manners.
The first man asks. I pray thee have me excused. The second man asks. I pray thee have me excused.
The third man does not ask.
I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.
He is not requesting anything. He is informing the host. The family exception is the one that stops asking permission, because it is the one nobody will challenge you on.
I have watched that sentence come out of men’s mouths in a church parking lot. Nobody ever pushes back on it. You cannot. It sounds like devotion.
Before I started really going, my Sunday was a morning service, maybe. Then video games. Books. The TV.
An hour of religion and thirteen hours of nothing.
And I gave it a name. I called it a day of rest.
That is the part I need you to see. I did not skip church and feel bad about it. I skipped the rest of the day and found a holy word for what I did with it.
Rest is in the Book. Rest is commanded. I took a true word and laid it over an empty afternoon like a bedsheet over furniture nobody uses.
I was not in rebellion. I was alone, with a verse on top.
That is exception Christianity. It never contradicts scripture. It just borrows a word and walks off with it.
A man came to Christ with a request. Not an excuse. A request, and the most reasonable one a human being has ever made.
“And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.” (Matthew 8:21-22)
Bury my father.
Not a business trip. Not a busy season. His father was dead and he wanted to put him in the ground first.
And the answer was no.
I have read that verse a hundred times and it still knocks the wind out of me. If burying your own father does not qualify, I do not know what any of us think we are holding.
Luke records the next man in line asking for something smaller.
“Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.” (Luke 9:61)
Let me first go say goodbye.
“And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)
Let me first. That is the phrase. Not let me never. Let me first.
Exception Christianity is almost never a no. It is a not yet with good paperwork.
Back to the supper. The servant reports the excuses, and here is the reaction.
“So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.” (Luke 14:21)
Being angry.
Three men gave three true reasons and the host of the supper was angry. Not disappointed. Not understanding. Angry, and the King James does not soften it.
Then he fills the seats.
The poor. The maimed. The halt. The blind.
Look at who walks into that room. Every one of them had a physical, visible, unarguable reason to stay home. The halt could barely get there. The blind could not see the door.
They came anyway.
And the men with property and livestock and a new wife, the men who could have walked there in ten minutes, got this.
“For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.” (Luke 14:24)
None of them. Not one. The invitation did not expire. It was withdrawn.
She cannot breathe. A car ride frightens her. By every standard we use on ourselves, she has earned the pass.
She is praying about how to get there.
Another man wrote in the same thread. Eighteen years in a big rig, never a Sunday off, and he did not offer it as a defense. He called it damage. His words. “I can personally attest to the damage that does to the spiritual life. Trust me, no Christian wants that.”
Eighteen years with a real, unavoidable, employer-enforced exception, and the man calls it a wound instead of a permission slip.
Those two are the halt and the blind, and they are inside the house.
I have all my lungs and a car that starts.
I bought oxen.
Somebody is going to read this and hear me condemning the man who cannot get there. Hear me carefully.
The parable does not shut out the poor and the maimed. It seats them at the table.
Christ never once turned away a man who could not come. He turned away men who would not, and dressed it as could not. There is an ocean between those two and every one of us knows exactly which side of it we are standing on.
You do not need me to tell you which one you are. You knew before you finished the first paragraph.
A reader wrote me a long, gracious, serious response today. He hosts a church in his home, twice a month, fifteen or twenty people. Lapsed Catholics. Disillusioned Baptists. People who could not find accountability in a building and went looking for it in a living room. Fifteen years, three hours a morning in the Book. He is not lazy. Nobody could call him a church hopper. Most men in a pew are doing less.
I am not going to pretend that is the same thing as a man watching football in his recliner. It is not, and saying so would be dishonest.
But he wrote one sentence I keep coming back to.
“We hold ourselves to that standard, too.”
Ourselves.
That is the whole thing. Not because his teaching is wrong. Because there is nobody in that room with standing to tell him if it ever goes wrong.
You cannot submit to yourself. You cannot be sharpened by your own opinion. And the man who has never once been told he is wrong by somebody who outranks him is not free. He is unsupervised.
I say that with respect for a serious brother, and I would say it to my own face.
Not for you to feel bad. Feeling bad is the cheapest thing a man can produce on a Sunday and it converts to nothing.
I want you to say your exception out loud.
Not think it. Say it, in a full sentence, to somebody who is allowed to answer you.
Your wife. A man at church who will not flinch. Say the whole thing out loud. “I do not go because ____.”
The reason will be true. That was never the problem.
But an exception cannot survive being spoken to a person who loves you. It only lives in your own head, in your own words, in a room where you are the only voice.
That is the last place any of them can hide.
They all with one consent began to make excuse.
Do not consent.
-Adam
Three men had somewhere better to be. The supper went on without them.
What Are You Really Hungry For? https://biblicalman.gumroad.com/l/bsxfzy
